Toyotomi Hideyoshi (redirected from Hashiba Hideyoshi)

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

(born 1536/37, Nakamura, Owari province, Japan—died Sept. 18, 1598, Fushimi) One of the three unifiers of premodern Japan (with Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu) who brought the nation out of its Warring States period. He began life as a peasant but was raised to the rank of samurai (warrior) while a soldier for Nobunaga. After Nobunaga's death, he was appointed kampaku (chancellor to the emperor). Having concluded an alliance with his former rival Ieyasu, he became in 1590 the head of an alliance of daimyo that constituted a government of national unification. To stabilize society, he imposed the division of society into warriors, farmers, artisans, and tradesmen (an adaptation of ancient Chinese social divisions) and confiscated swords from all but the warriors. With visions of empire, he made two destructive but unsuccessful attempts to invade Korea (1592, 1597). After his death, power passed to Ieyasu.

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Toyotomi Hideyoshi 

Born 1536; died Sept. 15, 1598, in Fushimi. Military leader and statesman of feudal Japan.

Of peasant origin, Toyotomi evinced extraordinary military talents, in recognition of which he was made a close aide of Oda Nobunaga during the latter’s campaigns to create a centralized state. After Oda’s death in 1582, Toyotomi assumed full power, although he formally held only the post of chancellor (kampaku). In his efforts to strengthen the centralized state machinery, he undertook several expeditions against Japan’s princes; he also carried out reforms intended to consolidate the feudal system. In 1588, Toyotomi issued an edict directing that all weapons—swords, daggers, bows, and guns—be confiscated from the peasants. Between 1589 and 1595 he put into effect a series of measures aimed at restoring serfdom. Among them was a census of landed estates; after it was taken, the peasants were forbidden to leave the lands to which they were registered.

In 1592, Toyotomi led Japan’s feudal lords in a predatory war against Korea, hoping to go on to conquer China and the other countries of the Far East. The Japanese, however, were defeated in the Imdin War in 1598.

REFERENCES

Zhukov, E. M. “Politika Khideesi v otnoshenii krest’ianstva.” Izv. AN SSR: Ser. istorii i filosofii, 1946, vol. 3, no. 6.
Personality in Japanese History. Berkeley, Calif., 1970.